Thermo control boiler?

[bt01344]

I have a Thermo Control stove that I am looking into the possibilities of converting over to heat the water in my oil boiler so as to hopefully eliminate the running of my oil furnace in the winter time at least. I have a buderas boiler with an indirect-fired hotwater heater so if I can keep the hotwater in the boiler up to temperature I should be able to be able to heat the baseboard heat and the DHW. This sounds like the same system that JerriEric was using I believe. My question is for him- you said you had a pump that ran the water between the boiler and the wood stove coils all the time. Did you ever have any issues with this like over heating the boiler water?, or not being able to circuilate the water when the power was out? Did you have a differential controller that controlled the circulator pump or did it really just run all the time? My hot water storage tank is in the basement and the stove is on the first floor- I know these systems work better if you have them with the storage tank higher- how was yours? Any info would be very helpfull and appreciated.
Thank you
Brandon
Western Mass

 

[steam man]

I have a Thermo Control stove that I am looking into the possibilities of converting over to heat the water in my oil boiler so as to hopefully eliminate the running of my oil furnace in the winter time at least. I have a buderas boiler with an indirect-fired hotwater heater so if I can keep the hotwater in the boiler up to temperature I should be able to be able to heat the baseboard heat and the DHW. This sounds like the same system that JerriEric was using I believe. My question is for him- you said you had a pump that ran the water between the boiler and the wood stove coils all the time. Did you ever have any issues with this like over heating the boiler water?, or not being able to circuilate the water when the power was out? Did you have a differential controller that controlled the circulator pump or did it really just run all the time? My hot water storage tank is in the basement and the stove is on the first floor- I know these systems work better if you have them with the storage tank higher- how was yours? Any info would be very helpfull and appreciated.
Thank you
Brandon
Western Mass

Here's an old post on heating DHW. https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/13691/

I think trying to convert a stove to heat boiler water is asking too much from it without having potential problems such creosote not to mention the BTU output. There is also the issue of overheating so a backup plan is needed. Your stove on the first floor makes even a gravity loop difficult. At least heating DHW you can dump to a drain during overheat. Anyway, check out the old post an go from there.

Mike

 

[jerrieric]

The very small pump worked 24/7. If the water in the furnace which is used for domestic and baseboard got too hot, it was setup to dump the heat to the baseboards. This does happen and I would not install this inline with the furnace boiler unless you have some automatic dump. I never really had an issue with the stove overheating. But it does produce creosote if burned on a very low setting. I only cleaned my outside brick chimney at the beginning of each season. I never had to take the metal stack off to clean that. I would run the stove hot every month or so to burn out the metal stove pipe just in case creoste was building up. Never had a problem and I used it for 7 years. In fact the stove is still being manufactued on their website. From the picture it looks exactly like my 500. I still have the bump. It is stored away but I can take a picture and send you the model if interested.

 

[bt01344]

Thank You JerriEric for the information. I was wondering if you still have that Thermo-control 500 in your basment? I may be interested in it if you do. I have family up in your "neck of the woods" and may be up there sometime soon. If you would like to contact me you can email me at [email protected] , or you can reply to this with forum and I will get back to you. Thank you